Former museum opens renovated doors

Posted: Thursday, February 24, 2000

By Joan StroerStaff Writer

A mecca during the Gilded Age for young scholars and later a way-station for art lovers, the former Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia opens its doors today for the next wave of occupants: university administrators.

UGA President Michael Adams and his staff take up residence today in the restored museum, returned to its pristine 1907 glory and converted to an administration building in a $2.5 million project that spanned more than two years. The North Campus project is getting cheers from campus experts in historic preservation.

''I'm delighted to see the historic exterior restored,'' said John Waters, an associate professor of the UGA School of Environmental Design. ''Maybe it highlights a new trend on campus. We have some other old buildings that could use some help.''

A few steps away from the Administration Building sits Old College, a circa-1806 building and the campus's oldest structure, which sports air-conditioning units jutting from its windows. And that's just an exterior problem, Waters points out.

But Waters said restoring the old museum for use as an administration building is a step in the right direction for the flagship university.

The Neoclassical building, funded by Georgia native and New York banker George Foster Peabody, began life as a library but served as the home of the Georgia Museum of Art from the 1950s to the 1990s, when a new museum was built on East Campus.

The renovation has restored the unhurried feel of a turn-of-the-century college library.

Over the last two years, contractors, woodworkers and plaster experts used old papers and photographs to eliminate jarring, 1950s changes to the structure: metal store-front doors were replaced with heavy wooden doors, dropped acoustical ceilings were torn away to reveal a soaring 22-foot-high atrium and intricate plaster cornices; windows were replaced and Athens cabinetmaker Pat Quinn applied oak paneling to the atrium's walls and columns.

Preservation detectives also restored dozens of blocked-out windows to their original 15-foot-high glory and rebuilt one staircase in the two-story building based on the shadow of the old staircase glimpsed in an old picture.

Sixteen restored portraits of former UGA presidents, gathered from other campus offices, hang on the walls.

The work proceeded under a new Georgia law encouraging state agencies to preserve or restore buildings older than 50 years.

''This isn't just a preservation, it's a restoration,'' said Paul Cassilly, the UGA architect who managed the project. ''This building is a valuable historic property owned by the state of Georgia, and under state law we are required not just to take care of it, but to maintain its historic significance.

''It's of a much higher quality, in construction and craftsmanship, than some of the other older buildings,'' Cassilly said. ''This is just a finely built building.''

Joining Adams in the restored building will be the vice presidents and staffs of academic affairs, finance and administration, and external affairs. Their office suites were designed to retain a reading-room feel from the old library design, with reference-style reception desks and brass light fixtures modeled on the originals.

The university purchased $300,000 worth of furnishings for the building under state contract.